The Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Berlin announced Tuesday that the BDS movement has been classified as “unconstitutional.”
The head of the office, Michael Fischer, explained that the movement’s status in Berlin’s antisemitic and anti-Israel landscape has significantly strengthened over the past year.
Fischer clarified that BDS’s ideology is based on “explicit denial of Israel’s right to exist.” According to him, BDS activity goes beyond boycotting cultural events or Israeli economic products. “The goal is to make the existence of Israel impossible in the international context. It is aimed at its destruction,” Fischer stated.
I dont think that there is ideological ties to these. What we have in Germany is a very problematic amalgamation of a few ideologies.
First of all it is important to understand that Antisemitism has been alive and well in Germany past World War II. The proclaimed “Memory Culture” only started to gain traction in the West in the 80s. In the former GDR there was much more “Memory Culture” but it revolved around overemphasizing the struggle of communists and other political antifascists, who were one of the many groups mass murdered in the concentration camps. for the first 30 or so years after the war, the tactic was to largely just be silent about the past.
When Germany reunited it was met with a lot of fear by surrounding countries that Germany could become not only powerful but also hostile and imperialist against its neighbors again. To improve the image of a peaceful nation Germany embraced the narrative of the “memory culture”. A country that has worked through its past and learned from it. This narrative was especially important as the economic consequences of the reunification served as a breeding ground for militant Neonazis who committed Pogroms against migrants and other attacks and were quite visible inside Germany. Meanwhile there was one big issue. There was hardly any Jewish people left in Germany. Still today there is approx. 200.000 Jewish people, less than 0.3 % of the total population and among them many people with Israel-German dual nationality. So German politics looked towards the state of Israel to grant them the rubber-stamp of having adorned for the past.
From there on the Israeli influence on the Jewish society in Germany grew and politics increasingly looked to embrace Israel as evidence of having adorned for the past.
Over the past 15 years or so a new aspect came in. By ramping up racism against Arabs in Israel, but also in all of the western world it became attractive in Germany to create the narrative of “imported Antisemitism”. This is especially embraced by the right and far-right, who are looking to free themselves of the “inherited guilt”. By making “the Arab” the source of Antisemitism in the public discourse Germans could legitimize their racism and free themselves of their guilt. “See it is them who are the Antisemites, not us!”. For Israel this served a similar purpose. By making the Palestinians in particular and Arabs in general “Antisemites” questions about the legitimacy of opposition to Israel could be silenced. There would be no need to look into the veracity of statements like accusing Israel of apartheid. That statement is simply antisemitic and expression of evil, no need to look further…
Finally this morphes into Fascists like the AfD embracing Israel as it servers to justify ethno-nationalism. It also serves to attack progressive political movements from the left as “antisemitic” for not being in blind support of Israel. This helps to circumvent questions of the imperial history of Germany, Germanies other genocides and of course the question of colonial dimensions to Israels expansionism, the interest of weapons manufacturers in perpetual war and the broader context of Western geopolitics in the Middle East.
Here you can see a banner that is showing it quite well imo. The subtext reads “against left, right and islamist antisemitism”. They put “left” first as this seems to be more important than the “right”. Meanwhile Antisemitic crime, especially violent crime in Germany is largely perpetuated by the far right, such as a terror attack on a Synagogue in 2019.
If you put these pieces together, you can see why German politics are so hellbent on doubling down for Israel. They would have to leave their Lalaland in which Germany is the good guys. They would need to face the rising Fascism in Germany and relate it to their own policies and acknowledged how they enable it themselves. They would have to acknowledge how they attacked Jewish people who oppose Israel and they would need to acknowledge that they never made Germany a safe and welcoming place for Jewish people.